Day 6: Favorite Witchy Book(s)

Books have always been one of my portals. Not just for escape, but for understanding myself, my identity, my spirituality, and the parts of me I never had language for growing up. When I started walking a more intentional spiritual path, I didn’t have a mentor. I didn’t have a coven. I didn’t have someone guiding me step by step. What I did have was curiosity, intuition, and a lifelong love of reading.

So I did what I always do.
I found books that helped me make sense of the magic I could feel living inside me.

Today’s Soft Bruja Challenge prompt is all about those witchy books. The ones that opened my eyes, grounded my rituals, deepened my understanding, and shaped the way I walk through the world as a spiritual Latina woman. Some are nonfiction guides that taught me about my inner bruja. Some are fiction stories that reminded me that our magic is real because it is rooted in our emotions, our culture, and our humanity.

Here are the ones that have stayed with me.

NonFiction

Witch: Unleashed. Untamed. Unapologetic. — Lisa Lister

This was the first book I read cover to cover when I intentionally stepped onto my spiritual path. And honestly? It changed everything. Lisa Lister doesn’t just talk about witchcraft. She talks about womanhood. She talks about intuition. She talks about the power of living in sync with the moon, our bodies, and the rhythm of the world around us.

I loved how she explained the historical violence women experienced simply for being healers, midwives, herbalists, or intuitive women. And then she flipped it, showing how the witch is reawakening in all of us today. This book gave me reasons for the things I felt but never voiced. It gave me clarity. It made me feel less alone in my intuition. And it made me feel empowered.

If you are new to the spiritual path, this book is a grounding, validating, energizing place to start.

The Green Witch — Arin Murphy-Hiscock

This book is soft bruja energy in paper form. It is a gentle, practical guide to working with nature: herbs, flowers, essential oils, roots, and the elements. Since I have a green thumb, this book made everything click. It helped me understand how to blend the medicinal and the spiritual. How to turn my plants into partners. How to use herbs for both healing and magic.

It also gave me language for things I had already been doing instinctively.
Dominican households are full of plant magic.
We just never called it witchcraft.
We called it “remedios.”
We called it “lo que hacía tu abuela.”

This book helped me see the lineage in that.

Santa Muerte: The History, Rituals, and Magic of Our Lady of the Holy Death — Tracey Rollin

This book called to me from the shelf. You know that feeling. When something in your chest says, “Pick this one up.” So I did. And I read it cover to cover.

Santa Muerte is often sensationalized, misunderstood, or demonized, but this book breaks the stereotype. It explains her history, her purpose, her rituals, and why she is beloved by so many marginalized communities. She is a protector. A guide. A guardian for those who walk dangerous paths, whether physically, spiritually, or emotionally.

This book helped me understand her without fear.
It helped me understand the devotion.
It helped me understand why her energy resonates with certain people.

And it gave me a deeper respect for her as a spiritual force.

Fiction

Fiction has its own magic. It carries emotion, cultural nuance, inner journeys, and the psychological depth that mirrors our real lives. These are the fiction books that have nourished me lately:

Salt Bones — Jennifer Givhan

Dark, atmospheric, culturally layered, and beautifully written. This book woke up all the parts of me that love gothic, magical realism storytelling through a Latina lens.

Signal To Noise — Silvia Moreno-Garcia

A perfect blend of nostalgia, magic, and emotional complexity. Silvia always delivers stories that feel deeply human and culturally alive.

https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/signal-to-noise/9400848/#isbn=1786186446

The Ordinary Bruja — Johanny Ortega

My own story. My heart. My lineage. My attempt at writing a girl who believes she is ordinary until life forces her to remember her magic. This is the book of my soul, and it belongs on my witchy shelf too.

Why These Books Matter to Me

Each of these books came to me at the exact moment I needed them. They taught me something different:

Witch taught me to honor my intuition.
The Green Witch taught me to work with nature.
Santa Muerte taught me to understand sacred things without judgment.
Salt Bones and Signal To Noise reminded me how powerful our stories are.
The Ordinary Bruja reminded me why I write.

These books are more than recommendations.
They are stepping stones.
Ritual companions.
Pieces of my healing.
Pieces of my identity.
Pieces of my bruja journey.

And if you’re walking your own path, maybe one of these books will become part of your story too.

***Some book links are Bookshop affiliate links. If you buy a book through them, I earn a small commission that helps me keep writing and sharing stories. Thank you for supporting indie authors and indie bookstores.

#bookshopAffiliate #brujaIdentity #greenWitchBooks #healingThroughBooks #herbalMagic #intuitiveReadingList #latinaSpirituality #magicalRealismFiction #santaMuerteGuide #softBrujaChallenge #spiritualSelfCare #theOrdinaryBruja #witchyBookRecommendations

Dominican Bruja Representation in Fiction Explained

Let’s get one thing straight: The Ordinary Bruja isn’t just a story about magic.
It’s about Dominican magic.

And yes—there’s a difference.

Not the kind of magic that shows up in viral TikTok spells or aesthetic alter setups (though no shade if that’s your jam). I’m talking about the kind that’s handed down in whispers, in superstition, in the way your tías clutch their chest and say “ay, eso no era normal.”

That’s the magic I grew up seeing. That’s the magic I gave to Marisol.

Because The Ordinary Bruja isn’t a fantasy story with a sprinkle of culture. It’s a cultural story where the magic rises from the land, the language, and the legacy we carry in our bones.

Where This Magic Comes From

I didn’t invent the kind of magic in this book. I recognized it.

I saw it in my paternal grandmother—how she’d talk to plants, to photos, to things she wouldn’t name out loud. I saw it in how the women in my family used their intuition like a compass, even when they didn’t call it that. I saw it in how silence was used to protect, how herbs were used to heal, how dreams were used to warn.

That kind of brujería isn’t loud or performative. It’s integrated. It’s not “set aside” to be practiced—it’s lived. And when you’re Dominican, you know: everything has meaning. Every ache, every dream, every visitor at your door.

We don’t always call it magic. But it is.

Why It Was Important for Marisol to Be Dominican

Marisol’s brujería had to be Dominican because her fear, her guilt, her longing for identity—all of it is tangled up in the cultural weight she carries.

She’s not just scared of magic. She’s scared of what it means to claim it:

• Will it make her more other than she already feels?
• Will it mean accepting a family legacy she never asked for?
• Will it confirm everything she was taught to hide?

Dominican culture is full of reverence and repression. Faith and fear. And for Marisol, navigating that duality is part of the journey. She’s not just learning spells—she’s unlearning shame.

Preorder The Ordinary Bruja

The Ordinary Bruja: Book One of Las Cerradoras Series – Johanny Ortega

When grief pulls Marisol Espinal back to Willowshade, she uncovers a legacy buried in shadows, silence, and ancestral magic. The Ordinary Bruja is a haunting coming-of-age story that blends psychological horror with Dominican folklore and magical realism. For fans of Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Isabel Cañas.

If you love what you read, I’d be honored to hear your thoughts. Please leave a review on your preferred platform and let other readers find the magic in The Ordinary Bruja.

Real Brujería Isn’t Always Pretty

The magic in The Ordinary Bruja isn’t about incantations or potions. It’s about relationship.

Marisol talks to altars. To wind. To soil. To her dead grandmother.
She doesn’t know that’s what she’s doing at first. But she feels it. And that’s what ancestral magic is—feeling something you weren’t taught to explain.

One of my beta readers told me, “I’ve never seen this kind of magic in a book before.”
And I laughed, because same. That’s why I had to write it.

This isn’t Hollywood magic. It’s Dominican quiet <– I know an oxymoron 🙂
It’s shaking off a bad dream and throwing water out the window just in case.
It’s wearing red thread around your wrist because your abuela said so.
It’s songs that sound like lullabies but are actually coded warnings.
It’s silence that holds more power than any spoken spell.

Brujería as Inheritance

In the book, Marisol doesn’t just stumble upon power. She’s called by it.
She inherits it.
She resists it.
And slowly, painfully, she remembers it.

This mirrors how many of us come into our own spirituality—especially if we’re first-gen, diaspora-born, or disconnected from homeland roots.

We feel the pull but don’t have the language.
We dream the dreams but don’t trust them.
We sense the energy but second-guess it.

Marisol does all of that. And through her, I got to write about what it means to be Dominican and magical without needing permission.
Without needing to prove anything.
Without needing to look like anyone else’s idea of what a bruja should be.

For Every Dominican Who Feels the Pull

If you’ve ever been told “eso no se dice”…
If you’ve ever lit a candle and didn’t know why…
If you’ve ever felt like your body knew something before your mind did…

This book is for you.

It’s for every Dominican girl who didn’t grow up seeing herself in fantasy books.
For every bruja who learned her power in pieces.
For every child of silence who found her way back to truth through whispers and wind.

Because yes, Marisol is a bruja.

But she’s a Dominican one.
And that means everything.

Born in the Cold: How Lockdown and Isolation Birthed The Ordinary Bruja

There are stories you write because they’ve been living inside you.
And then there are stories that sneak in when the world shuts down and says, Now what?

The Ordinary Bruja was the latter.
Born not from a place of inspiration—but isolation.
From the grief-laced silence of lockdown. From the heavy stillness that filled every room during those early months of COVID. From the deep need to escape, even if only into fiction.

Quarantine, Cold, and Creative Survival

At the time, I didn’t set out to write anything heavy.
I wanted to write something fun. Something magical. Something that could offer readers (and me) a break from the relentless trauma we were witnessing daily. But the truth is, when you’re sitting inside four walls with nowhere to go and too much time to think, the story that bubbles up is rarely light.

Instead, what came through was Marisol Espinal—a young woman suffocating under the weight of inherited silence. A bruja who didn’t know she was one, stuck in her own kind of quarantine from her identity, her power, and her past.

It was supposed to be a cozy fantasy.
It became a reckoning.

Writing Through the Grief

Every day, I’d write between doomscrolling, homeschooling, and trying to pretend things were okay. But they weren’t. Not in the world, not in my house, and not inside of me. So I did what I always do when I can’t fix things: I wrote through it.

And that’s when the story started to sharpen.

The coldness Marisol feels at the start of the novel? That was my own.
The isolation in her haunted ancestral home? That was me, in mine.
The slow realization that something unseen but very real is feeding on your fear and insecurity? That was all of us, watching the death toll rise and wondering if we’d ever be the same.

But the turning point for her—and for me—was this:
The only way out is through.

Why The Ordinary Bruja Became the Book It Did

Lockdown didn’t just give me the time to write—it gave me the emotional depth to write something true. Not autobiographical, but spiritually honest. Every choice Marisol makes, every doubt she wrestles with, is rooted in that feeling of being trapped by something bigger than yourself. And the eventual decision to fight anyway.

It’s a book about ghosts, yes.
But it’s also about the ghosts we carry inside us.

A Book for the Ones Who Felt Everything

The Ordinary Bruja is for the people who felt the weight of those early pandemic months in their bones.
Who grieved people they didn’t know.
Who wrestled with their identity while the world asked them to stay still.
Who tried to create joy while everything was falling apart.

It started as an escape.
It ended up a reflection.
And now, it’s a reminder:
Even in isolation, even in grief, even in silence—you are still becoming.

Want to know how it all turns out? Preorder The Ordinary Bruja

The Ordinary Bruja: Book One of Las Cerradoras Series – J.E. Ortega

When grief pulls Marisol Espinal back to Willowshade, she uncovers a legacy buried in shadows, silence, and ancestral magic. The Ordinary Bruja is a haunting coming-of-age story that blends psychological horror with Dominican folklore and magical realism. For fans of Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Isabel Cañas.

If you love what you read, I’d be honored to hear your thoughts. Please leave a review on your preferred platform and let other readers find the magic in The Ordinary Bruja.

Marisol Is Me — Hesitant, Haunted, and Holding On

There’s something deeply sacred about writing a character who holds a piece of your truth—especially the parts you kept hidden, even from yourself.

In the final episode of The Why Behind the Bruja podcast series, I talk about how Marisol isn’t just a fictional character. She’s me. The hesitant girl who didn’t want to be seen. The woman still learning how to love herself without conditions. The bruja who carries power in her blood but sometimes doubts she deserves it.

Growing up with a lazy eye made me hyperaware of how people saw me—before they ever heard me speak or felt the warmth I carry. I wanted to hide. But I also wanted to shine. I’ve always lived in that tug-of-war: the desire to be invisible and the hunger to be witnessed. That tension shaped everything, including the way I write.

And it didn’t help that the world around me—like many Dominican girls—trained me to earn my worth through achievement, through behavior, through silence. Pride felt dangerous. Joy felt indulgent. Love had to be earned.

But I remember one moment. My mamá, fierce like Mamá Belén, holding my chin and saying:
“Don’t you dare walk with your head down. You’ll get a hump. And you don’t want that.”
So I held it up. Even when they laughed. Even when they called me a monster or a weirdo.
Eventually, I didn’t need her hand anymore.

That’s the beginning of self-love, right? Not the kind they sell you in affirmations, but the kind you fight for.
The kind you give to yourself not when you’re proud—but especially when you’re not.

That’s what The Ordinary Bruja is really about.

Marisol’s magic isn’t flashy.
It’s ancestral. Uncomfortable. Buried under years of self-denial and fear.
But it’s real. And it pulses in her even when she doesn’t believe she’s worthy of it.
Just like mine pulsed in me—during the pandemic, during the silence, during the writing of this book.

This episode is my full-circle moment. The confession and the celebration.
Because sometimes the story you’re telling is also the story you’re finally living.

#brujaIdentity #characterConfession #childhoodHealing #DominicanStorytelling #LatineAuthors #magicalRealism #radicalSelfLove #selfWorthJourney #TheOrdinaryBruja